


In the moment that I drown

by lagardère (laurore)



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, a post 7x04 story, mentions of Jon/Daenerys, mentions of Theon/Sansa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28841112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurore/pseuds/lagard%C3%A8re
Summary: Maybe it’s not Jon that Theon sees, but another dark-haired son of Ned Stark’s: his shortcomings and regrets staring him in the face, except that the eyes are brown instead of blue, and that they don’t hold much affection for him.
Relationships: Theon Greyjoy/Jon Snow
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	In the moment that I drown

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on 2017-08-10  
> (this was written before season 8, we were all far more innocent back then.)  
> reposting at a request from [theonsfavouritetoy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theonsfavouritetoy/pseuds/theonsfavouritetoy)

**i. From the shore**

Theon comes in from the sea, his legs dripping seawater and his chest still heaving from the effort of dragging his boat ashore.

Jon would never have expected anything else. Theon’s always been a Greyjoy first and foremost. Slippery where the Starks were staunch, impulsive and careless where they were impulsive and brave. Jon’s spent most of his childhood thinking that what bravery there was to Theon was accidental.

 _“Reapers and traitors and cold hard men, the lot of them, cold as the grave,”_ a scullery maid had shouted at Robb once, a girl Theon had made promises too, and this Jon will give to him, he was always a good liar.

Theon comes in from the sea, or the sea spits him out.

And yet, once he’s stepped onto dry sand – once he’s seen Jon and gone still, like some wary animal – it’s not of the seafaring Greyjoys that Jon thinks but of Winterfell. He thinks of Robb, laughing at one of Theon’s crude jokes, and of his own attempts at not letting a smile spring to his lips. And he remembers Sansa, the warm weight of her between his arms after she’d stumbled in from the frozen north.

One of the first things she’d said was, _“Theon saved my life. Theon helped me escape.”_

“Sansa,” Theon asks. “Is she alright?”

He takes a step towards Jon and then another. Jon bridges the remaining distance, seizing Theon by the front of his jerkin in a swift move that lifts him clean off his feet.

This is for Robb, this aborted blow.

“What you did for her,” he says, as Theon bows his head – as he lowers his eyes, in fear or in acceptance, “is the only reason I’m not killing you.”

This is for Sansa, this brutal act of mercy.

**ii. To the sea**

This Theon is leaner and far more careful than the boy that Jon used to know. Not in a skittish way, either. There’s a quiet dignity to his bearing that Jon doesn’t remember from before, as if winter had caught up prematurely with him, the snows settling in on him before they fell over anyone else.

Jon wonders what Theon sees, when he looks at him.

When he was reunited with Sansa, there were reminiscences. Moments in between war councils and the spiteful squabbling of siblings when they brought up their father and their sister and the games of old.

There will be no such talk of times past with Theon. Sometimes Jon looks at him and he forgets that it wasn’t Theon who shot Robb. Theon was always a good marksman, after all, and what was his act of treason, if not an arrow aimed straight at Robb’s heart?

Sometimes Jon looks at Theon and he catches Theon looking back, and in his eyes he doesn’t see fear but rather pain and resentment.

Maybe it’s not Jon that Theon sees, but another dark-haired son of Ned Stark’s: his shortcomings and regrets staring him in the face, except that the eyes are brown instead of blue, and that they don’t hold much affection for him.

It’s hard to think that there wouldn’t be any affection left in Robb’s gaze if he looked at Theon now, in spite of everything. Jon comes to regret that he can’t provide any.

Their rare conversations are stilted. The first afternoon after Theon’s return, Jon joins him on the beach, where Theon is standing in wait, as if the steadiness of his gaze might somehow conjure a dragon’s shadow upon the horizon. The both of them are unarmed and yet Jon keeps catching himself reaching for the pommel of his sword.

“Is the Lady Brienne still with her?” Theon asks.

On their first three or four encounters, he talks about nothing but Sansa. Maybe it’s that Jon’s presence brings her to his mind. Maybe it’s that she’s the only subject that he can use like a shield to ward off Jon’s hostility.

The day after Theon’s arrival, Daenerys returns from the south with a wounded dragon, and a letter comes from the north, warning of the white walkers’ advance on Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.

Jon obtains from Daenerys that he might accompany the first shipment of dragonglass to the Wall. The time for power struggles is over, or at least, it has been deferred by more immediate threats. Daenerys will go south to pursue her thorough destruction of the Lannister forces.

“You’re sorry to see her go,” Theon says.

It’s the first thing he’s said that didn’t start with a question about Sansa.

“I need her help."

A smile ghosts over Theon’s features. The sight of it is so unexpected and mirthless that Jon feels a shiver course down his spine.

“Of course. Keep telling yourself that, if it helps you sleep at night.”

The jibe is even more unexpected than the smile. Jon might have been left speechless if he hadn’t already had to suffer Davos’s clumsy innuendos.

“I don’t sleep,” he says sternly. “And it’s the Night King’s face that keeps me awake, not the queen’s.”

Theon watches him carefully.

“It helps if you don’t think too far ahead,” he offers. “Right before sleeping, you should only think about the next day. Not any further than that, in one direction or the other. You can... You can keep your thoughts of war for the daytime. And as for the past... Maybe it’s better left for after the war. When we can look back on everything.”

“If we’re still alive, and if there’s anything left to look back on,” Jon says. They share a rare look of understanding.

“Farewell, Jon,” Theon says. “I hope you’ll be successful.”

Jon huffs.

“You don’t believe me. How can you believe I’ll be successful?”

During the last meeting of Daenerys’s advisors and allies (for this is what he is to her now, as she reminded Jon when he tried to slip away before the beginning of the meeting), Theon had spoken out of turn and against Jon.

Jon had been trying to request another ship, so that he might double the amount of dragonglass that he would be escorting to the Wall.

_“We’ll need all the ships we can use in the south, against my uncle’s fleet. We don’t even know that there’s been an attack in the north. We don’t even know the size of this threat.”_

“It’s why men like you exist, Jon,” Theon tells him now, as they are about to embark on opposite journeys, one to the cold north and the other to the burning south. “You keep away the monsters that the rest of us can’t fight.”

Jon has a fleeting vision of the courtyard at Winterfell, and of three boys chasing dragons with their wooden swords.

“I can’t fight them alone,” he says. “Try to stay alive, Greyjoy.”

He hopes that Theon doesn’t see straight through these parting words.

For it’s impossible to look at Theon and think he’ll make it through another war. Jon’s fairly sure that what’s keeping him standing is not strength but the desperation of the feverish, the final courage of a wounded sea creature that won’t drown without taking the sailor and his boat with it.

**iii. To the frozen wastes**

The next time they meet, they are fighting the same war. Jon’s army is trying to hold back the hordes of the dead and Eastwatch has fallen and finally, finally Daenerys comes to join them with her remaining two dragons and what could be salvaged of the vanquished Lannister and Greyjoy forces.

Daenerys’s fleet comes up against an unexpected enemy as it comes near Eastwatch: that very same ice that allowed the white walkers and wights to go around the Wall (and this is a vision Jon won’t forget anytime soon, these thousands of shuffling shadows walking upon the very sea).

Many of the ships are soon caught in the ice and the troops have to disembark and cover the rest of the distance on foot. This is what happens to Theon, now a sailor without a sea.

It’s only a strange battle for the newcomers who haven’t been fighting on the ice for nights and nights on end. By day, Jon sometimes lies on his back in the middle of the frozen sea, to let the sun warm what it can, and it’s like this that Theon finds him on one such morning.

Theon’s figure is so gaunt and pale that for a moment, Jon thinks that he’s back in the first days of the war, caught in a never-ending storm when the wights kept coming and he’d lifted his sword so often that it came to seem like it had a will of its own and was doing the fighting in his place.

“Are you alive?” he asks, the question ringing loud across the white wilds around them.

“I’m more alive than you, Jon,” Theon says, as he extends his hand.

And it’s a consequence of this war, that Jon can’t refuse this now, neither the help nor the easy camaraderie that was theirs before Theon turned his back on the Starks. They’d never quite been brothers, not like Robb had been to the both of them, but they got along alright, most of the time. The fights were exciting and the insults relieved the ache of their respective positions. The Stark bastard and the Stark hostage. There was a comfort in their mutual show of disdain.

Jon seizes Theon’s gloved hand, remembering something Sansa said about flayed fingers. With the gloves on, it’s impossible to tell. Theon does seem to have been wielding his sword just fine, wounded fingers or not. The blade still hangs from his hand, covered with unidentifiable bits of mouldy fabric and rotten flesh. At the start of the war, Jon and his soldiers and the Free Folk often behaved the same way, keeping their swords at hand for fear that another monster would suddenly lunge at them from behind a block of ice.

“You’ll want to clean this,” Jon tells Theon, pointing towards the sword. “You never know. Sometimes the smallest bits still move and bite.”

He watches as Theon abruptly lets go of the sword. It clatters on the ice. He promptly goes down on one knee to pick it up, and pulling out a rag from among his furs, he sets to cleaning it, his movements jerky.

“You’ll get used to it,” Jon says. “I heard you got your sister back.”

“Yes,” Theon replies, inspecting the sword carefully for any piece of matter that he might have missed. “She’s back with the fleet, though. They’re trying to free the boats from the ice. We’ll need them if the dead manage to make their way further south. You’ll need them.”

“If they keep forcing us back, I’ll go across land,” Jon says. “Most of my men are fighting in the Gift.”

“You’ll get to Winterfell faster if you take one of our ships.”

“I can’t go back to Winterfell.”

He turns away, pretending to survey the activity of the nearby camp – the quick unpacking of supplies and unfolding of tents, right here upon the ice, because retreating to the land for the day would take too much time. It won’t in a few days, when the white walkers have forced them to retreat another hundred leagues to the west and south.

He might have succeeded in hiding the bitter twist of his mouth, but Theon picks up on the longing in his voice.

“When this is over,” he says. “Then you can go home.”

 _Home._ Home to Sansa’s annoyingly sound advice and to the soft smiles that tug at the corners of her mouth when he manages to string together a few clumsy words of praise. Home to Arya whom he’s been told will have him flat on his back in the courtyard the moment he tries to parry one of her lightning-quick blows. Home to Bran.

 _Bran is changed_ , Sansa had written to him. _More deeply perhaps than the rest of us. Don’t expect the boy you knew. In many ways, he is become a stranger, though a stranger who has an intimate knowledge of what we’ve been through, and also, maybe, of what will happen to us._

“I have to make sure there’s a home to return to,” he sighs. “At least, with the dragons, maybe we’ll stand a chance against the wights. Come along. I’ve slept enough, and there’s another storm coming.”

Theon follows him, blindly almost, as if this had always been the rhythm of things between them. But this is war, and so there’s no time to question this mute obedience, much like he cannot stop to stare at the movement of water under the ice, or to think about Daenerys’s bright-eyed gaze.

She’d joined him the previous morning, jumping down from Drogon’s back and onto the ice.

_“They would not tell me if you were alive.”_

_“It was wise of them. There’s no knowing for certain in the midst of battle.”_

_“Well, I’m relieved that you’re alive, Jon Snow.”_

Perhaps this is the nature of wars, that it forces one to accept changes that it might otherwise have taken a lifetime to adjust to. As it is, Jon has no choice but to live with the knowledge that the Dragon Queen is drawn to him, that the ground under his feet is frozen water, and that Theon Greyjoy is willing to fight and die in his name.

The weight of any of it would be enough to drown a less dogged man, but Jon merely walks faster, and when the time comes he’ll lift his sword higher, and maybe he’ll live to see another day.

**iv. To the echoing halls**

This is not the homecoming Jon had hoped for. The silent hostility of the Northerners and this brand new strain, as if a blade had come down between Daenerys and him.

And still the war goes on, with the difference that he will now have to lead men and women who think him a liar and a traitor to the North.

He’d meant for this retreat to remind the troops of what they were fighting for. Let them rest within the protective shadow of Winterfell, and enjoy the castle’s stores and a momentary respite from having to glance over their shoulder with every step, expecting a blue-eyed creature to fall upon them with blunted nails or a glass-like sword.

He did not expect Bran’s first words to be, _You are not my brother._

He did not expect for these words to spread like wildfire through the castle, along with this curse-like whisper, _Targaryen._

“Are you alive?” a voice says.

Jon opens his eyes and finds that he fell asleep fully clothed and face down upon his bed, his forehead pressed against his gloved hand.

“More alive than you are,” he replies, mostly because he can remember Theon saying this exact same thing, once upon an ice-cold morning.

In fact, this is far from being true, and of late he has observed a swift reversal between them. Theon has been looking livelier by the day, and sometimes one can even glimpse brief flares of his old self, in the insolent curve of his mouth, or in the way he carries himself, with an offhanded grace that reminds Jon of Robb. It must come with the territory of being the heir to an old house.

Jon knows what provoked these changes, or at least, he suspects that he knows. He’s seen it in flashes, words exchanged on doorsteps, clasped hands and lasting looks, Sansa’s head resting on Theon’s shoulder as they sat in the Godswood. (And on that occasion Jon had taken a startled step back, as if he’d been the one intruding – as if Theon had any right to be there, under the shelter of the blood-red leaves.)

This has been going on ever since Theon walked through the gates of Winterfell. Sansa was quick to intercede in his favour, a hand of steel closing around the Northern lords’ arms before they could reach for their swords.

Jon would intervene, if he didn’t know that Sansa won’t listen. He’s seen her stand up in righteous fury, scolding men who wouldn’t prepare their castles for the long winter ahead. And he’s seen Theon strike down wights by the dozen, wielding his sword like he once wielded his bow, with a smug efficiency that Jon can’t very well argue against since it gets things done.

And yet, Theon and Sansa’s moments together seem to be quiet and gentle, and it makes Jon long for what he must have lost for good as soon as word of his parentage came to Daenerys’s ears. Perhaps it’s merely that the quiet is not permitted to him. Only the desperation.

It makes him long for the boy he once was, so eager to be sent to the Wall. That boy still thought he would find fulfilment in the defence of the realm. Yet the words he spoke then are far truer now than they were before. _I am the sword in the darkness._

He’s a sword indeed, a sword rather than a man, and the blade will become blunted with time. He’s starting to feel it, in this weariness that has taken root inside him and that he can’t ever seem to shake.

“Sansa sends me,” Theon says. “She wants to know if you’ve eaten anything in the last three days.”

 _Does she soothe him?_ Jon wonders. _Is she stitching him back together with every feather-like brush of her steady fingers?_

“I had dinner with Arya last night,” he says, pulling himself up into a sitting position. Immediately he drops his head into his hands. Still the room dances around him, unless it’s the fire, playing tricks on his eyes.

“Arya had dinner in the hall, last night,” Theon corrects him. “You sparred with her. The only food you got was a kick in the face. I was there, remember?”

Jon raises his head and gives him an incredulous look.

“Are you mothering me, Greyjoy?”

His gaze falls upon the plate in Theon’s hand.

 _You’re still my brother,_ Sansa had told him, when the news reached her. _You’re still a Stark. To me you’ll always be a Stark, because it’s who you are that matters, not who your parents were. And I know you, Jon. I do now if I didn’t before. You’re courageous and strong and everything a true king should be._

“Why did she send you?”

“I don’t know,” Theon shrugs. “Can I sit down?”

He doesn’t wait for Jon’s answer before stealing the chair beside the fire. The plate he sets down on the table. Stew, by the smell of it. Sansa’s warned him that such rich fare wouldn’t last.

“If we ride out tomorrow, you have to eat something. In between all the sleeping.”

With a sigh of acceptance, Jon pulls off his gloves. He holds out his hand for the plate.

“What’s going on out there?” he asks.

“There’s been sightings of wights in the Wolfswood.”

Theon leans forward so that he can meet Jon’s eye, and briefly Jon wonders if he’s got this wrong, because the man before him hardly seems healed – the fire casts dark shadows across Theon’s face and gives his blue eyes a feverish gleam.

“Unless this isn’t what you meant,” Theon says. “Unless you meant outside your chambers, where Arya’s pacing with your wolf because they don’t dare come in, and beyond that Sansa’s trying to hold the castle together while you sleep. There’s a foreign queen wandering the Godswood and I’d venture a guess she doesn’t feel welcome here. She could probably use a little warmth to tide her over. Might be our last night as living men. Maybe you should make the most of it.”

“I don’t have any warmth left in me,” Jon mutters, forcing himself to swallow another mouthful of stew.

“Brooding’s only becoming if you do it where other people can see,” Theon says, rising from the chair. “Alone in here, you just look ridiculous.”

“Is that the kind of sound advice you gave Robb?” Jon snaps.

For a moment, neither of them says anything. And finally, unexpectedly, Theon’s mouth quirks.

“I knew there was some fire left in you, Snow.”

**v. And into the snow**

“I thought I might find you here.”

Jon breathes in deeply before he turns around. He knew that he’d have a hard time avoiding Theon until the Greyjoys left. Still, he’d been hoping that they might just miss each other. An unfortunate set of circumstances: Theon riding out while he was in the Godswood, oblivious to the blaring of horns and to the distant echo of an army on the move.

He meant to avoid this confrontation, because it can’t be anything but a confrontation, and he knows that underneath the newfound poise, this Theon is as fragile as the man he saw step out of the sea, with his shifting eyes and his shoulders bravely squared against an expected assault.

“I wanted to say goodbye,” Theon says. “Since I’m leaving. I heard you might be leaving too. No one seems to know what...”

“The queen wants me to come south with her.”

 _To marry her, mayhaps._ The words have not been spoken, at least not by Daenerys. Tyrion was less coy about it.

_A Targaryen union. It’s hardly a novel idea._

“What do you want?” Theon asks, cautiously, as if he’s taken pains to think of the right question. And the right question it is, though Jon would wager that Theon means for it to be helpful, and all it does is make him angry.

“What do _you_ want, Theon?” he retaliates. “To go home? Were these islands ever home to you?”

“Daenerys has given us a kingdom to rule. I have a duty...”

“Daenerys has given your sister a kingdom to rule.”

“I have a duty towards Yara. To help her, as much as I can.”

“What about my sister?” Jon snaps. “Don’t you have a duty towards her as well?”

“Is this what this is about?”

When they were boys, and constantly seeking a breach in the other – quick haughty whispers of _“Snow”_ and _“Greyjoy”_ behind Robb’s back – Theon’s taunts often fell short of their mark. Because he never looked close enough to see if they would. Theon was as reckless in these boy fights as he was with the girls he took to his bed. A good marksman, but a terrible sparring partner.

The new Theon is much more perceptive, and it frightens Jon, sometimes. How easily Theon can read him now. How he’s stopped trying to avert his eyes.

“You could stay,” Jon says gruffly. “She’d have you.”

“Winterfell wouldn’t have me,” Theon amends, with a sharp smile. “You know that. And if you do leave to follow your queen, I expect you’ll hand over the North to Sansa, so that it doesn’t fall under southern rule once more. It’d be a shame, now that Daenerys has finally agreed to give up her claim. And then what? Sansa becomes queen in the North, and I become her king consort? Theon the Turncloak, king in the North?”

Jon’s instinctive grimace makes him laugh, loud and brittle.

“I might not leave,” Jon says.

Theon comes closer, joining him before the weeping face of the heart tree.

“What do you want, Jon?” he asks again.

“Rest,” Jon mutters, a little spitefully.

“Don’t we all?”

With quick, jittery movements, Theon pulls off one of his gloves. He glances at Jon. A mute question – _Is this alright?_

But whether it is or not, Jon doesn’t think to stop him as he reaches for the heart tree. His eyes remain upon Theon’s scarred hand. The flesh of his fingers is pink and wrinkled. His middle finger is slightly crooked for not having been set right, and he’s missing torn nails that never grew back.

“Rest in a watery grave,” Theon murmurs, palm flat against the white bark. “It could be ice or snow, I wouldn’t mind.” His eyes cut to Jon’s. “Doesn’t it make you wonder, how come we’re still alive? How easier it would be, if we’d just stayed dead. You at the Wall and me... Every breath feels like I’ve stolen it. Stolen it from the people I...”

“No use worrying about that. You can’t breathe life back into a corpse. Robb’s or anyone else’s.”

“You believe that?”

Before Jon can do much more than widen his eyes, Theon’s seized a handful of the fur collar of his cloak and he deals him a quick, close-mouthed kiss. It’s enough of a sneaky move that by the time Jon thinks to shove him away, Theon has already drawn back.

There’s an arrogant smile on his face that Jon hasn’t seen in years.

It’s the memory of a thousand childhood games that has him pull Theon to him.

_“Yield! You’ve got to yield now!”_

_“No! No one can defeat the mighty Kraken!”_

This, and the sudden wild quickening of his pulse.

Theon can say what he likes, that Winterfell wouldn’t have him and that his home is elsewhere, but he smells and tastes like nothing else. A roaring fire in a damp room, snow crunching underfoot, ale in the cups and roasted game in the plates and the murmur of the wind behind the foggy windows.

Jon takes and takes and takes. He steals Theon’s breath and the warmth of his mouth and the jarring bite of his teeth. And when he’s done taking, he finally thinks of giving back, and the kiss turns softer. Fast beating hearts and the skidding of paws upon the snow. Something quivering under the ice, the both of them not quite dead, not yet.

When he draws back, both hands still wrapped around Theon’s collar, Theon’s eyes are the colour of the ice around them, a hazy blue.

Jon lets him go and Theon slowly rubs a hand over his mouth and jaw.

“If it... If it starts pulling at you again,” he says. “You’ll have a harbour in Pyke.”

It’s hardly a promise of a quiet sea and a safe haven. There’s a roughness to them both that this era of peace won’t erode.

Jon shoves him back, not very hard, another remnant of times gone by.

_“You never play by the rules.”_

_“A pirate never does. We can’t all be knights, can we?”_

“This is your damn home, Greyjoy. The sea around Pyke turns to ice, you better start making your way back here, one sodden step at a time.”

Theon might have treated this as a poorly-delivered joke, but he remains serious.

“Alright, then. The day the sea round the Islands turns to ice. You’ll see me coming back.”


End file.
